Microsoft “recently” removed the need to have all sorts of Hard Assisted Virtualization technology in order to run Windows XP Mode inside Windows 7. With that in mind “any” PC can now run Windows XP Mode, which is great news for us (with our under powered machines J).

Download the necessary “bits”. Only the first one is large. The rest are quite small, and might already be installed.

When it’s done, start Windows XP Mode from the Start -> All Programs -> Windows Virtual PC program folder. This will load a virtual XP machine into a window on your current laptop/desktop.

You then install whatever apps you want, for example, Office 2003. And of course you then apply the relevant service packs.

When you’re done you can close the window, and you’ll get this message :

You can now launch the “published” applications from your start menu, you’ll see a subfolder under Microsoft Virtual PC, with the Office applications in, and when you select (for example) Outlook you’ll see :

After a minute or so Outlook will start, and take you through the profile creation wizard, then drop you in to your mailbox !

You can add your published applications to the taskbar like this :

Now for the big one .. Why do we want to do this. Well, this looks cool, right?

And if you want to side-by-side test something that appears to behave differently in Office 2007 versus Office 2003… this is a possible helper for that situation.